Walls Become Canvas For Masterpieces

Cultural And Historical Influences Help Muralists With Their Large-scale Art

To Mario Castillo, it was nothing more than a way to get something done during the summer of 1968.

Castillo, who studied art at Lane Tech High School, led a group of youths involved in the city`s Neighborhood Improvement and Beautification program to a wall at 1935 S. Halsted St. and gave them a simple instruction: paint.

The result was a mural entitled ``Peace,`` a work paying tribute to the Indian cultures of the Northwest, as well as serving as a rallying cry against the Vietnam War.

``None of what we were doing was predetermined or planned. It just turned out,`` said Castillo, who now is a professor at Columbia College. ``We weren`t trying to make history.``

They wound up doing that anyway. As it turned out, Castillo`s mural was the first done by a Mexican in Chicago since the 1940s, during an era when the federal government paid artists to create such works. More importantly,

``Peace`` was the launching pad for a Hispanic mural movement across the city that reached its zenith during the 1970s and is still enjoying a healthy existence.

In fact, the Chicago area has more than 300 murals and mosaics

dotting the landscape, with several dozen more in the working stages. And interest in the art form, which artists said dwindled during the 1980s, seems to be increasing as a new crop of muralists take to the streets alongside seasoned veterans.

``I see things building up again in Chicago,`` said Robert Valadez, an artist who has collaborated with several famous muralists over the last decade.

One of most visible of this new breed is Francisco Gerardo Mendoza, a muralist who has worked on at least five wall drawings. Mendoza, an art teacher in the Chicago public schools, had spent much of his time working with students on various mural projects at schools and throughout the city, then decided to strike out on other projects.

His latest venture, other muralists said, is emblematic of his strengths: the ability to deftly shape visions and the ease with which he integrates large numbers of teenagers into his work. The project, which employs 27 youths, seeks to cover a major portion of 18th and Paulina Streets in murals. ``We are trying to cover the neighborhood with culture and history,``

Mendoza said. ``This unites a community and gives it a taste of Mexican history and culture. You`re talking about a civilization that was visually inclined. Those were our ancestors. This is passed on. It is in us. It is in me. It is my job to spread it.``

Indeed, many muralists say much of the influences for their murals comes from history.

Mural art can be traced to cave walls in France and Spain. The tradition endured for thousands of years and was elevated during the Renaissance, when artists like Michelangelo flourished.

Chicago muralist Jose Guerrero said earlier murals took for granted one thing that 20th Century Mexican artists like Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco exploited: the audience. Rivera and Orozco were masters of painting public murals with social messages in their native country, he said.

By the 1930s, their influence and work had spread throughout the U.S. The art form found its way to Chicago in the late 1960s after a group of local muralists ventured south of the border and saw the works of several Mexican muralists and the messages they conveyed. It was during that time, a period of social upheaval in this country, that murals found their niche as ways for Hispanics and artists of other cultures to express themselves.

Many artists turned to drawing murals during the 1970s and 1980s, said Carlos Cortez, a veteran Chicago muralist, because they were locked out of traditional venues like galleries and museums. Conversely, an audience composed mostly of minorities was being deprived of seeing artworks representative of their cultures, he said.

But many more artists, Cortez said, used the murals as ways to communicate their views on issues and ills that may have been affecting or afflicting society or a particular community. In essence, the murals became visual soapboxes, tackling such issues as racism, the environment and world peace.

Many of those socially-conscious murals can still be found. Message-oriented murals are still being made by artists like Hector Duarte.

Duarte, a Mexican-born artist who has drawn more than 22 murals in Chicago, said he intentionally tries to lace his murals with images and messages that are revealing yet obvious in nature.

``The murals register on people slowly as they walk by. They don`t sink in right away,`` said Duarte, whose murals have dealt with race relations and Puerto Rican independence. ``People grow with murals little by little. The walls say many things and therefore so do the people.``

The process by which an artist brings a mural to life is almost as layered as the work he or she later creates, Cortez and Guerrero said.